INTERVIEW: Myles Kennedy

Best known as frontman for both ALTER BRIDGE and GUNS N’ ROSES guitarist SLASH’s solo band THE CONSPIRATORS, it’s fair to say that one of the last things people might have expected from Myles Kennedy in 2018 would be an acoustic guitar-focused country-blues album. Of course, that’s exactly what arrived back in March though, with Year of the Tiger – the long-awaited solo debut from Myles Kennedy, and one which saw him tackling some deeply personal issues around the death of his Christian Scientist father back in 1974. Just as he was about to head out around the UK and Europe on the second leg of touring for the record, we had the chance to speak to Myles about the album, what led him to explore the blues, and what else is still to come in his very busy future.

It’s been a touch under four months now since Year of the Tiger released – how have you found the reaction to it so far?

Myles: Yeah, um, surprisingly positive considering that it’s a very different approach for what I guess I’m known for; a lot of people know me as like this hard-rock singer and usually the setting that they hear my voice in the context of that is like loud guitars and bombastic drums, y’know definitely a hard-rock approach, and this record is more of an acoustic-inspired affair and there’s a fair amount of very introspective and personal songs. There’s still a fair amount of that in the other things y’know, whether it’s with ALTER BRIDGE or at times with SLASH & THE CONSPIRATORS some of those themes will make their way as well, but it’s really the sonic canvas that you’re hearing overall is very different, so I wasn’t sure how people would respond, and I’ve been pretty blown away to be honest with you, the fact that people have really given it a chance and the great support I have.

Obviously, you mention this being a very deeply personal album concept-wise, and one quite unlike almost everything else you’ve ever put out in other bands. Was there ever any trepidation about going with such a personal concept for the album as you were putting it together?

Myles: Yeah, there was, and I had to initially kinda put those concerns aside and really just follow my gut instinct and do this for myself, because there was just a certain pull towards the whole concept, and not just musically but from a lyrical standpoint I felt like I had to chase down for my own sake. And it’s interesting because once the record’s done or even just getting closer and closer to releasing the record, I think that’s when I realised like “woah, you’re really putting a lot of yourself out there, and you’re really doing it in a way that’s kinda changing the approach so people aren’t really going to be used to this, so are you sure you wanna do this?” But I kept having to tell myself, y’know, you have to be fearless with this, you have to do this for you, you’re following your gut, and that’s fine. So it was kind of an interesting process in that sense and I had no idea what to expect. I’m glad the chips just kinda fell the way they did. It definitely exceeded my expectations in every way.

It feels the notion of you working on a solo record had already been this whole thing that’d been circling for quite a few years prior to Year of the Tiger even being revealed, so how long had this thing really been in the works for before you announced everything?

Myles: Well, it’s interesting yeah, the mystery of that solo record started I guess perhaps around 2009 when I started doing the first one. So I wrote a bunch of songs and recorded a full album and kind-of put it on the backburner for years and years and just didn’t have time to basically track the vocals and complete it. The vocals were written and everything, I just needed a window of time to complete the record, get the mixing done and all that. So that was all wrapped up a couple of years ago, and so then I started to see appearing when I’d be able to release it and tour it, which was gonna be this year, and I went back and listened to that entire body of work and really felt like the shelf life had kind-of expired, it didn’t resonate with me the way that it did when it was originally written, and I felt like it would be the wrong move to put that out as my first solo record. So, around December of 2016, I started writing an entirely new record. I gave myself around seven months and wrapped it up in the middle of last year, and so all in all Year of the Tiger took around seven months to write, and another month or so to record.

Did anything from those initial first album sessions carry over into Year of the Tiger, or was it more of a completely new and separate thing?

Myles: Yeah, there were two ideas actually. Love Can Only Heal, I recorded a version of that for the first solo record, and I knew it was a solid song because people kept mentioning that they loved it and I felt like it would fit the theme of this record as well. That was a very last-minute addition though, and it was interesting because I had Elvis [Baskette, producer] take the vocal that I’d cut on the original demo; not even the first real recording I did, but the demo that I cut in my basement, and then we took that vocal and rebuilt everything around it in the studio on this record. And then another idea that’s been around for a while was just the melody and the first few lyrics for the song Year of the Tiger – and that I didn’t actually record for the first album, but it was around during the writing of that first record. Actually, it’s funny, I remember I was out on my lawn doing some yard-work one day and I remember hearing that melody and hearing that lyric and I grabbed my phone and recorded it, and it’s finally made its way onto a record y’know, years later.

Going back to this being such a different vibe from your usual material – purely in terms of the music itself, did you have any particular inspirations that went into how the final release would end up?

Myles: There’s definitely influences that to my ear are very obvious because I’ve listened to those guys so much but never really tapped into their influence to this degree on a record before. So I would say the late Chris Whitley was definitely one, he was an amazing artist that I discovered in my twenties who was basically this incredible talent who had kind-of this blues angle, but also this THELONIOUS MONK thing he’d kinda bring into it; just had a really unique way of approaching the resonator and he was a really big inspiration on me. Another one was MISSISSIPPI JOHN HURT who was more of a country-blues artist and put out his first record in like the late 20s – the fingerstyle stuff you hear on a song like Haunted By Design is definitely inspired by him. And then, uh, NICK DRAKE – not so much a blues artist but more of a singer-songwriter, very melancholy, some of his work on guitar really influenced me as well, along with a lot of the acoustic side of LED ZEPPELIN as well of course. The Led Zeppelin III record and parts of the fourth record were definitely in a way I chose to arrange some of these songs, you can hear that influence as well.

As far as the actual creative team for the record went, how soon into the process did you decide to go with ‘Elvis’ Baskette as your producer for the record?

Myles: It was pretty soon, I think that one of the things I’ve learned from years of making records with Elvis, I mean jeez, nearly 16 or 17 years, is that I trust him so much and I trust his judgement and with the final product. And even though I knew that we had never made a record like this kind of record together, and he’s not known for making these kind of records, I know the kind of music he likes and is capable of doing as a producer, so I thought this was a good move because he got it. And when we first started talking about how to approach recording, he said all the right things, like “I think we should record this to tape”, “I think we should keep this stripped-down and not overdo the production”, and that’s what I really wanted to hear – I didn’t wanna make a super grand sonic landscape, I wanted this to be about the songs and about the vocal performances, and he was on the same page from the beginning.

To my ear, I guess the only point where the record really edges towards that kind of grandiosity would be something like the strings on The Great Beyond…

Myles: Yeah, that’s a good point. And it’s interesting with that song – that one was a really tough song to kind-of pull back on, because a song like that would work so well if you just turned up the guitars and started rocking it out. And it’s interesting because we just did rehearsals this weekend because I’m gonna bring out a band for part of this next tour, and it’s just a three-piece but for some of those I’m actually turning up the distortion a little bit and we’re gonna take that approach on some of these songs, we’re gonna rock it out just a bit. [laughs] Not too much, just a little, and that song definitely lends itself to that very well, it’s very natural.

This is probably a slightly broad question, but now that the album’s been out for a few months and finished for even longer – looking back on it all now, do you have any particular favourite songs or moments from the record?

Myles: There are a few moments: I’m really happy with how Haunted By Design turned out, especially considering I wasn’t even sure if it’d make the record at all because, I don’t know, it’s almost just a straight-up country-blues song and I remember sending the demos out to Zia [Uddin, drums] and kind-of being apologetic like “yeah, I don’t even know if this song’s even gonna make it” and he comes back like “oh man, I love that song” and that’s when I thought like maybe it might be worth chasing this one down. So that’s definitely one I’m very, very pleased with how it turned out. There’s a song called One Fine Day that closes the record off, which I feel like adds a very appropriate punctuation to the record in kind-of setting up the next phase of the journey for what my family went through, which was a very positive thing, but that record I think foreshadows that beautifully. So yeah, those would be two moments that stick out for me.

Can you see yourself ever recording another record in a similar vein to this at some point at all, or is this more a one-and-done type affair?

Myles: I really hope to, y’know, musically it’s been such a gratifying experience for me, and also just on a personal level has something; it’s a genre that I’ve loved for a long time and to have the opportunity to do it and then discover that the fans are embracing it and approaching it with an open mind is wonderful, and so with that said, I would love to revisit this approach again in a few years.

You’re now just about to start the next major leg of touring for this album, first heading over here to the UK for Ramblin’ Man Fair, followed by a solo tour, and then carrying on with a month or so of ‘full band’ shows around Europe. What should fans be expecting from the two types of show on this run?

Myles: Well, if you’re going to the first couple of weeks of shows, it’ll be akin to the solo shows that I’ve been doing for the last four months and it’ll be a bit of the ALTER BRIDGE material, a bit of the SLASH material, with a bit of MAYFIELD FOUR and then obviously a big chunk of Year of the Tiger, plus a few covers thrown in. The latter half of the tour, once Zia gets over from the US, him and Tim [Tournier, guitar] will join me on stage and we’re gonna try and play as many of the songs from Year of the Tiger amplified as possible, but not the whole record, and then do a few other songs as well. And then, in conjunction with that I’ll still do stripped-down versions of a few ALTER BRIDGE and SLASH songs as well just to kind-of round it out. So that’ll be a bit of both.

You mention there about the setlists pulling from all aspects of your career, from MAYFIELD FOUR, to ALTER BRIDGE, to the CONSPIRATORS, plus you’ve done covers from the likes of ELTON JOHN and ROBERT JOHNSON during the previous leg – given the depth of your catalogue, how difficult is it to put together such a wide-ranging type of performance?

Myles: Yeah, well, I experimented a lot before all of these dates started back in like January, I remember I kinda locked myself away and just played song after song and tried a lot of different covers here and there, because I felt like a set like this; the idea of doing a retrospective and doing your catalogue, it’d be fun to mix in artists and songs that influenced me as well. And so that was kind-of an important part of it, and it was really kinda trial and error and then just trying different songs in a set and seeing what reacted and what didn’t react etc. So yeah, it was definitely an interesting thing for me, but that’s the beauty of this whole thing, is that we’re just stripped-down and it’s just myself and some acoustic guitars and occasionally Tim comes up and does some songs with me. You can kinda fly by the seat of your pants a little bit more because you don’t have a band, and so you can improvise a little bit, and it’s been fun.

So, obviously this touring’s going to be taking up your time for the next few months, but as far as everything else in your world that’s coming up goes, it’s been confirmed in the last couple of weeks there’s a new SLASH album called Living The Dream coming out in September – I’m guessing that’s going to be the next main focus after this is finished?

Myles: Yep, so I’ll be doing this run here in the UK and Europe with my solo record, and then come September and October I’ll be touring the US with SLASH & THE CONSPIRATORS, and also trying to figure out what’s going to happen the latter part of the year. I might do some more touring with my solo thing, we’ll see, but one thing I definitely have to start doing is focusing writing for the next ALTER BRIDGE record, which’ll come out next year. So yeah, I’m gonna be staying busy one way or another. [laughs]

Just to close off – is there any message you’d like to give to the readers of Distorted Sound Magazine who might be fans of yourself and your many projects?

Myles: Well, you know, for me I just feel very grateful I think is the word that sums it up. Kind-of touching on what we were talking about earlier, I was able to make a record that I’d kinda always wanted to make and do it in a way that’s different from what I’m known for, and the people that support the music that I’ve been a part of over the last few decades gave it a chance, y’know? So I just wanna say thank you more than anything, because it’s been one of the most musically-rewarding experiences of my career and I’m just grateful to everybody who got onboard and let me do this.

Year of the Tiger is out now via Napalm Records.

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